Cuba's American Problem

It's Also America's Problem!
 The Media!!

     This Alex Wong/Getty Images photo was taken yesterday -- Tuesday, August 29th, 2017. It looks innocent enough: First Lady Melania and President Trump are shown leaving for Texas to show their respect for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, one of America's all-time most devastating natural calamities. It was a day in which six members of one family, including four gorgeous children, were killed in the massive floods, as was a beloved policeman who was trying to save lives in Houston, the 4th largest American city. But as you study the above photo...and I believe it's important that you study it...please understand that on Tuesday, August 29th, 2017, the left-wing mainstream U. S. media was in the midst of an unending conspiracy to end the Trump presidency. That massive electronic coup will likely succeed because the omnipotent conspiracy includes CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post at the forefront. Instead of covering and reporting on news events, those ultra-powerful entities are primarily devoted to impeaching Trump, saturating the influential television airways and the print media with anti-Trump propaganda. 

           Have you studied this photo? Note that the First Lady is wearing High Heel Shoes. Those shoes incredibly became the focal point of much of the "news" coverage provided to the American people by the aforementioned propaganda outfits. While suggesting that the President of the United States and the First Lady had no business going to Texas, the First Lady's high heels were highlighted and excoriated as being unfit, inappropriate or whatever. 

           Because of wall-to-wall propaganda saturation and their high-profile monopolistic advantages, the conspiratorial anti-Trump assaults masquerading as "news" coverage is extremely effective when used to overwhelm masses of people with one-side propaganda. As I have said before, I do not support Mr. Trump nor do I believe he was qualified to be President. But, unlike the conspiracy obsessed coup-mongers, I respect the Office of President and the electoral process that put him in the White House.

      Once she arrived in flood-ravaged Texas, Melania Trump, as planned, dressed accordingly with no-heel shoes. The gutless U. S. media that had assailed her high heels took credit for her change to sneakers but that, as usual, was a propaganda lie. Her shoes above were put aboard Air Force One for that exact purpose. Melania has shown patience with unfair attacks from an incompetent and unfair U. S. media, even when her 11-year-old son was criticized for his attire.

     Representing the United States as First Lady in Texas, Melania Trump proudly wore a black cap that had white-lettering spelling out FLOTUS -- First Lady of the United States. In the United States and on two important and exhausting foreign presidential trips since January 20th, Melania has, without fail, represented America with class and uncommon dignity.

     With an awesome combination of beauty, grace, and intelligence...she speaks five languages fluently...Melania Trump is a truly outstanding American First Lady. On a day when she was in Texas trying to boost the moral of devastated flood victims, the media conspiracy intent of dethroning her husband unleashed savage assaults on her by using vicious propaganda-pundits like CNN's Ana Navarro and Amanda Carpenter, neither of whom are as classy, intelligent or decent as Melania. While CNN promotes Navarro and Carpenter as "political experts" or "Republican strategists," they are nothing more and nothing less than propaganda-pundits -- Navarro propagandizing for what she hopes will be the next two Presidents, Jeb Bush followed by Marco Rubio; and Carpenter propagandizing for a Ted Cruz presidency. To succeed, Navarro, Carpenter and other propaganda-pundits need to eliminate Trump as soon as possible and, of course, in that endeavor they are joined by powerful Democrats as well as the aforementioned left-wing mainstream media conspirators. While I pinpoint Navarro & Carpenter for their gutless assaults on First Lady Melania as an offshoot of their anti-Trump zealotry, Navarro & Carpenter represent the norm in the mainstream U. S. media -- that is, a media that emphasizes propaganda-pundits as opposed to legitimate broadcast-or-print journalists.

      A 34-year-old graduate of Ball State University, Amanda Carpenter is presented to the world by CNN as a renowned political expert. But she is nothing more and nothing less than just a propaganda-pundit trying to put Senator Ted Cruz in the White House even before, if possible, fellow Republican Donald Trump completes his first 4-year term as President. And that's not Amanda's fault; she is simply what she is. The fault lies with CNN for thrusting propaganda-pundits on its viewers as opposed to providing them legitimate broadcast journalists.

      Born in 1971 in Nicaragua, Ana Navarro is perhaps CNN's most nauseating propaganda-pundit. A University of Miami graduate, she is a Miami-based product of the Bush dynasty and the Cuban-exile community. A "Republican Strategist" as depicted above, it is no secret she wants to destroy Republican President Donald Trump to put Jeb Bush in the White House followed by her second choice, Miami's Cuban-American U. S. Senator Marco Rubio. So when CNN promotes her as a political expert or Republican Strategist it is knowingly misleading its viewers.

       The above Buzz Feed photo of Ana Navarro was used in an article that highlighted her political and media influence as a politically correct propaganda-pundit. In other words, because she is Hispanic and her racism is against whites, Americans are not supposed to criticize her -- at least not out loud. But at times on CNN and other venues that include numerous speaking engagements on college campuses, she rails against "white men" as the world's racists. On CNN recently and typically, she assailed a white man on the set and then sarcastically {and racially} mused, "It must be nice to be a white man in America." Indeed, there are white men who are racists but Ana Navarro seems determined to preach that the only racists are white people, many of whom, like me, are sincere social non-racist liberals.

      As a propaganda-pundit, Ana Navarro uses her elitist status on television and on college campuses to, apparently, destroy the Trump presidency to make way for her favorites -- Jeb Bush first and Marco Rubio second. She, like most of the anti-Castro zealots in Miami, favors Jeb Bush of the Bush dynasty ahead of even Cuban-American anti-Castro zealots like Rubio.

     When Ana Navarro preaches "NO TRUMP!", she is advocating a "New Republican Party" led by a Bush or a Rubio. Her political correctness nowadays helps her do that as it also fattens her Miami bank account.

     It was reported in the last few days that the well-heeled Republican Strategist Ana Navarro has contributed to the controversial but very powerful Cuban-American Democrat Robert Menendez, the entrenched U. S. Senator from New Jersey. In September Menendez is finally facing federal corruption charges related to his involvement with a very rich Miami friend.

      Meanwhile, Republican Strategist Ana Navarro can use her ubiquitous CNN platforms to drive Republican Trump out of the White House to, apparently, make way for her Republican pals Jeb Bush and/or Marco Rubio.

      The moment Trump became President-Elect, before his official inauguration on Jan. 20-2017, Ana Navarro -- as shown above -- became an integral part of CNN's undisguised effort to impeach, via a media coup, the newly elected U. S. President even before he officially took office.

     In fact, Ana Navarro -- the highly paid "Republican Strategist" -- admits that she voted for the Democrat Hillary Clinton for President. The reason she "can't support Donald J. Trump" is, apparently, because he is blocking her two presidential choices -- Jeb Bush & Marco Rubio.

        Ana Navarro assails President Trump's use of Tweets but she uses Tweets to assail Trump and anyone close to him, including his classy First Lady Melania and, as shown above, Trump's Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner.

     On CNN and other broadcast venues as well as on Tweets such as the one above, Ana Navarro demeans President Trump as a human being while also demeaning the Office of President. "He is an animal. Apologies to animals." Cute, and also gutless and anti-American. But she gets away with it thanks to political and social correctness run amok.

      At many top Universities, including Harvard as shown above, Ana Navarro is a very high-priced speaker promoting her anti-Trump and anti-white messages. She is seldom, if ever, challenged when she calls the President and other white people racists even though her prime message seems to be that both legal and illegal immigrants deserve far more rights and far more welfare than white citizens. While most whites are pro-immigrant advocates like me, pure racism to fight perceived racism has, perhaps, pushed America closer to all-out civil strife, or revolution, than at any time since 1861 when America's Civil War became the bloodiest and deadliest war the U. S. has ever fought. Yet, CNN and other holier-than-thou institutions, including Harvard, seem more than willing to fight racism with more racism, which spawns both racism and extremism. But extremists-racists...and I include Ana Navarro in that grouping...are not the ones to blame because they are what they are and they are only using the tools that currently are handed to them on gold platters.

     The proliferation of propaganda-pundits on American television "news" programs is because they are just doing what they do at the behest of their bosses. The people most at fault, I believe, are the television executives who hire them because they obviously want propaganda-pundits as opposed to unbiased and legitimate broadcast journalists. CNN, especially its international division, still has excellent broadcast journalists but, as with MSNBC and other pundit-driven outlets, you will seldom see real journalists on CNN because it is quite apparent that super-boss Jeff Zucker has a far-left agenda that he wants to saturate across his airways using all of his anchors and almost all of his noxious and ubiquitous propaganda-pundits to further his extremist end-game. Actually covering the news is, at best, a secondary priority. And that appears to be why Zucker keeps hiring propaganda pundits instead of seeking true broadcast journalists as reporters, anchors and producers.

       Back in 1982 CNN was invented by a great man and a great visionary, Ted Turner. It indeed "shook up" television news in a splendid way. Ted's plan was to hire the best journalists and cover news events the way they deserved to be covered. His strategy worked, at least till he sold out to corporate billionaires to become a multi-billionaire himself and own more land acreage in American than any other person.

      When he was CNN's boss, Ted Turner sought to hire the best journalists, such as Christiane Amanpour who is shown above on Ted's left. But CNN's new billionaire owners soon began hiring a lot more on-set pundits than journalists.

      This photo shows Ted Turner in 2015 on his Montana ranch when Christiane Amanpour went to interview him on the 35th anniversary of CNN's founding. Quite emotionally, he let her know that he has "to live" with his biggest disappointment, which was losing CNN and then watching what it has become -- pundit-driven instead of journalism-driven. The difference between a Ted Turner and a Jeff Zucker is equivalent to the chasm that separates news from propaganda.

           AND BY THE WAY, Ted Turner was/is a huge fan of the late Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. The photo above shows Ted giving an early celebratory handshake to Fidel. In 1997 before a standing-room-only crowd at the Harvard Law School, Ted Turner got a rousing ovation when he uttered these exact words: "Fidel Castro is a helluva guy! You people would love him!!"

           Before Fidel died at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016, Ted often visited his friend in Havana. On one of those visits while he still owned CNN, Ted himself conducted an insightful interview with Fidel. That interview today is easily viewed on YouTube.

Fidel being interviewed by Ted.

       Romanticism related to the Cuban Revolution was not the reason Ted Turner was Fidel Castro's friend. Ted knew first-hand that Revolutionary Cuba was far better for the Cuban people than the Batista-Mafia regime had been, especially from the standpoints of health, education, safety and respect for everyday Cubans.

       In 2015 in Montana when Ted Turner was interviewed by CNN's Christiane Amanpour, as shown above, he sincerely answered her video-taped questions about Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution.

      We know today that CNN's visionary founder Ted Turner is not pleased with the current state of broadcast journalism in the United States. I do not know if he is familiar with Cuba's broadcast journalists, such as the superbly talented Cristina Escobar, but I believe if he were he might well agree with Ms. Escobar's well-known comparison. On both Cuban and U. S. soil she has made this definitive statement: "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." While CNN's current boss Jeff Zucker would heartily disagree with Ms. Escobar, her words should give him pause because she means it and, moreover, backs it up.

        This photo shows Cristina Escobar on the right conducting an interview on a brand-new set on Cuba's brand-new television channel Caribe that aims to provide the island and the Caribbean the best regional news coverage. Many believe it is achieving that goal. Ms. Escobar, on one of the YouTube interviews taped in Havana by U. S. journalist Tracey Eaton said: "We respect journalism and our audience. Cubans are too smart and too well educated to be lied to. Even slanting the news would be useless and self-defeating even if we were inclined to do it, which we are not." Those words from Cuba's star broadcast journalist makes me wonder if the bosses, anchors and pundits at CNN and MSNBC are assuming their American viewers are idiots when they saturate them with anti-Trump propaganda instead of actual Trump news, negative or positive, or the other top news. Meanwhile, having seen Escobar's work, I believe, either in Spanish or English, she is a cut above anything CNN or MSNBC has...and she seems far more respectful of her viewers than the U. S. networks are.

      The late and great Al Neuharth was the visionary who invented USA Today about the same time Ted Turner was founding CNN. Since the 1980s I have been a loyal paying USA Today subscriber. It is America's largest newspaper and it still covers the news but it too has joined the media coup-conspiracy to dethrone President Trump. Yesterday -- Aug. 29th -- a typical USA Today headline screamed: "TRUMP CAN BE BAD AND MAD SIMULTANEOUSLY!" The anti-Trump propagandists insist he is...crazy, mentally unhinged, mad, the worst person in the world! Yet, he is the President of the United States and they aren't. 

       While USA Today's coup against Trump is not as flagrant or obvious as that of the New York Times or the Washington Post, it nevertheless also shows an utter disrespect for the Office of President and for the electoral process that put him in the White House.

      If the high heels worn by America's classy First Lady Melania Trump are the focal point of lambasting President Trump's timely visit to flood-ravaged Texas, the actual message it conveys is that -- WOW! TRUMP'S VISIT TO TEXAS MUST HAVE BEEN A HOWLING SUCCESS!! While the mainstream U. S. media insists Trump is the biggest threat to America and Democracy, I disagree. I think the mainstream U. S. media has evolved as the biggest threat.

        This AFP/Getty photo of Melania Trump includes an illustration by a publication called The Lilly. It fronted an article today -- Aug. 30th, 2017 -- entitled: "Women Around the World Are Seeking More Power. America's First Lady Is Ignoring Hers." The article is written by a lady named Yeganeh Rezaian who is described as a "Journalist formerly based in Tehran, Iran. Now in Washington." Well, the article is typical anti-Trump propaganda via an assault on America's high-class First Lady. Even if its author was still in Tehran, she probably saw on international television when Melania and her husband the President were visiting Israel. He accidentally nudged her off the red carpet and then tried to casually apologize by taking her hand. She famously slapped his hand away. Ignoring her power as a woman? Not Melania. The hand she slapped away belonged to the most powerful man in the world, but propagandists can ignore facts while saying and publishing whatever they choose.

     History, for example, has recorded Melania's famous slap for posterity. Photos and videos of the entire walk on the red carpet still highlight the incident that took place on May 22nd, 2017, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Of course, on August 30th, 2017, the leading Melania online article rails about Melania "ignoring her power." Slapping away the hand of the world's most powerful man, which the entire world got to see, is far more truthful than propaganda lies. The photo above shows that, even in public with the world watching, Melania Trump does not "ignore her power." She didn't get to be First Lady by being a passive weakling. Her grace and zeal reflect highly on America even as the propagandists shame the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.    

*&***********************&*

   

  

  

Miami Old Guard Still Rules

Beyond Fidel's Lifetime!!
{Updated: Tuesday, August 29th, 2017}

     The photo above of the University of Havana is courtesy of Wikipedia. It is used to illustrate the best, fairest and most insightful article this month of August-2017 regarding the tumultuous and everlasting U.S.-Cuban relations. The August 28th article was written by Elizabeth Redden and is entitled: "A U. S. University Cuts Itself Off From Cuba." That university, not surprisingly, is the University of Miami. The article pointed out that many other universities have engaged with Cuba since President Barack Obama in 2014 opened doors that had long been locked shut by hard-line Cuban exiles who fled the January-1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution to regroup in nearby Miami in the section now known, all these decades later, as Little Havana. In 2017 many of the most prominent buildings and institutions at the University of Miami are, of course, named for the most vehement counter-revolutionary anti-Castro zealots such as Jorge Mas Canosa, Manual Artime, etc. Elizabeth Redden's Aug. 28th article about the University of Miami "cutting itself off from Cuba" began with these words: "After meeting with hard-line, anti-Castro leaders, the University of Miami says it won't enter into institutional agreements with Cuba. But what do faculty members think?" Of course, if you are a Cuban-American in Miami or a non-hard-line professor at the University of Miami or anywhere else, all polls show that you most likely favor normal relations with Cuba that would involve sane and decent engagements with the island. The fact that such sanity and decency has not prevailed in the United States for the past half-century reflects one basic fact that, unfortunately, intimidated Americans are not supposed to be brave enough to admit, namely: For a half-century America's Cuban policy has been constructed by hard-line Cuban extremists to benefit hard-line Cuban extremists politically and economically.

Respected journalist Elizabeth Redden.

      The insightful Elizabeth Redden article Aug. 28th about the University of Miami "cutting off ties to Cuba" {WOW!! What a surprise} highlighted the sane and decent reactions of non-hardliners and unbiased Cuban experts -- such as Lisandro Perez, a renowned authority on Cuba. Ms. Redden said Mr. Perez "expressed bafflement" about the University of Miami statement. He said, "I don't understand the concept. It's not just that I disagree with it: I don't understand the concept of a university research center that focuses on Cuba and does not have contact with Cuba."

       In other words, Mr. Perez doesn't understand "the concept" of the University of Miami because it defies every logic except the solitary one that, after all these decades, still sharply benefits the ultra-powerful minority of elderly counter-revolutionaries in Miami. Everyone else pays for it, especially U. S. taxpayers, U. S. democracy lovers, and millions of innocent Cubans on the island.

      Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016. His brother Raul, now very tired at age 86, will step down as Cuba's President in a few months -- no later than February, 2018 -- with a non-Castro set to replace him.

      History will always link Fidel Castro with the all-time most infamous Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Posada is now 89-years-old and today is still a heralded citizen of Miami. He was born on February 15, 1928 in Cienfuegos, Cuba. Both history and the Guinness Book of World Records register the fact that Fidel Castro survived by far the most assassination attempts made against any person. Posada proudly was involved in some of them but history also records that he was successful in many famed terrorist attacks apart from individual assassinations.

       In January of 1959 after the Cuban Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, many of the most vehement anti-Castro Cubans were sent by the U. S. government to Fort Benning in Georgia to train for the recapture of the island. Fort Benning graduates included what became arguably the three most famous anti-Castro Cubans -- Jorge Mas Canosa, Felix Rodriguez, and Luis Posada Carriles. The Bay of Pigs attackers in April of 1961 were trained at Fort Benning and in U.S.-friendly dictatorships such as Somoza's Nicaragua. As the photo here indicates, Posada graduated from Fort Benning as a 2nd Lt. but after the Bay of Pigs attack he stayed on the U. S. payroll as an anti-Castro zealot...while fervent anti-Castro Cubans like Jorge Mas Canosa, Felix Rodriguez, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, etc., aligned themselves with the Bush dynasty as their tickets to fame.

      By his own admissions, Luis Posada Carrilies was tied to many attempts to kill Castro but also to numerous anti-Cuban terrorist acts such as hotel and airplane bombings. He will forever be tied -- as the graphic above indicates -- to the Oct. 6-1976 terrorist bombing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455 in which all 72 on board died.

     As this de-classified document documents, the U. S. government -- Kissinger, etc. -- was well aware of Posada's involvement in the bombing of Cubana Flight 455.

     The top international news organizations, such as the London-based BBC as indicated above, have always had the courage and integrity to tie Posada to the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 and to the fact that he was "a CIA agent", which meant that U. S. taxpayers paid for his deeds. The U. S. media doesn't have that courage.

      The photo above shows a sister and a mother who had just been told that Cubana Flight 455 had crashed into the ocean with no survivors. Yes, Cuban victims cry too.

Cubans still mourn Cubana 455 victims.

     Memorials like this in Cuba and the Caribbean honor the victims of Cubana Flight 455 and remind the world that Posada is still a heralded citizen of Miami, Florida.

         For attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro in Panama in 2000, Posada and three other Cubans were sentenced to lengthy Panama prison terms. But Posada had powerful friends from Miami who happened to be in the United States Congress, including Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers Lincoln and Mario whose father Rafael had been a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship.

      The Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been in the United States Congress from Miami since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager as a prelude to his becoming the two-term Governor of Florida. In a famous article in the Miami Herald by top columnist Jim DeFede, Ros-Lehtinen was pinpointed as the prime force that freed Posada from the Panamanian prison. DeFede's article famously stated that terrorism against innocent Cubans was the same as terrorism against innocent Brits, Americans, etc. He asked Ros-Lehtinen if she would comment about the article in which he excoriated her for freeing Posada, but she refused. However, she eagerly uses the U. S. media, as indicated above, to excoriate Cuba at every opportunity.

      With the exception of the Jim DeFede article in the Miami Herald, seldom has the mainstream United States media had the courage to report fairly about Posada or about the Miami and Washington politicians who support him. But the top international media, such as the London-based The Guardian, are, of course, not so restrained.

      And so, as he nears his 90th birthday in February in Miami, Posada's famed antagonist Fidel Castro died of natural causes in Havana at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016. But the Posada-Castro nexus still defines U.S.-Cuban relations from 1959 till today.

And the nexus shames the U. S. and democracy.

     As a free and heralded citizen of Miami to this day, Luis Posada Carriles is shown above leading an anti-Obama demonstration in Miami because President Barack Obama had made some peaceful and decent gestures toward the Cuban people.

And by the way:

    This Reuters photo was taken by Rodi Said on August 26, 2017. It shows one of the most important military Commanders in the world right now. Her name is Nowruy Ahmed. She is shown studying war plans in her headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Her all-female unit of the Kurdish Peoples' Army is a key force in the ongoing battle to take the vital city of Raqqa from the Islamic State. Her brigade is supported by U. S. airstrikes. General Ahmed told Reuters, "We cannot determine the time period in which the Battle of Raqqa will end precisely because war has its conditions. But...according to our plans the battle will not take longer than two months from now."

     General Ahmed's all-female Kurdish brigade was already a legendary fighting force long before it entered Raqqa. This Reuters photo was also taken by Rodi Said.

*&***********************&*